This makes me sad (been there).
-
Oof. Like an ad for an airline right next to a story about a plane crash. From The New Yorker article:
"It did not help the staff’s morale that Lewis and his team were hobnobbing in Davos, or that Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez, were in Paris for Haute Couture Week. More troubling were reminders that Bezos, who once emblazoned “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on the paper’s masthead, appears to be pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the Trump Administration."
"As the staff awaited the axe, the President and the First Lady celebrated the première of “Melania,” a documentary that Amazon had licensed for forty million dollars and was reported to be spending another thirty-five million to promote. The deal was inked after Bezos had dinner with the Trumps shortly before the Inauguration."
“Democracy Dies in Darkness” was a mission statement.
-
This makes me sad (been there). From Joe Menn at WaPo: "Most of the Washington Post’s tech reporters were laid off today, including me. I have loved my time at the paper, which is where I wanted to work from age 15. I take some consolation in not being among the survivors who will have to work harder with less for fewer readers. On to better things."
Bezos is wealthy enough to run the Washington Post as a freebie, if he wanted to do so.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/02/jeff-bezos-destroy-washington-post
Why won't he just donate it as a nonprofit like The Guardian?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/12/27/best-of-politico-magazine-2025-00704341
Still wondering how his greed, hubris, and Kompromat fed into this decision.
https://www.theverge.com/amazon/667916/jeff-bezos-amazon-saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggihttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51210743
https://www.wired.com/story/bezos-phone-hack-mbs-saudi-arabia/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/29/apple-iphone-bezos-hack/
-
@briankrebs Seriously, I don't understand why the ex-pats don't form an enity called "realWashingtonPost".
I would pay.
I'm already paying some of them.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-killing-of-the-post@jab01701mid @briankrebs
If there isn't already a publication called "Ex-Post Facto"... there could be. -
Oof. Like an ad for an airline right next to a story about a plane crash. From The New Yorker article:
"It did not help the staff’s morale that Lewis and his team were hobnobbing in Davos, or that Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez, were in Paris for Haute Couture Week. More troubling were reminders that Bezos, who once emblazoned “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on the paper’s masthead, appears to be pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the Trump Administration."
"As the staff awaited the axe, the President and the First Lady celebrated the première of “Melania,” a documentary that Amazon had licensed for forty million dollars and was reported to be spending another thirty-five million to promote. The deal was inked after Bezos had dinner with the Trumps shortly before the Inauguration."
@briankrebs
Jeff Bezos = Lex Luthor, minus the charm. -
Oof. Like an ad for an airline right next to a story about a plane crash. From The New Yorker article:
"It did not help the staff’s morale that Lewis and his team were hobnobbing in Davos, or that Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez, were in Paris for Haute Couture Week. More troubling were reminders that Bezos, who once emblazoned “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on the paper’s masthead, appears to be pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the Trump Administration."
"As the staff awaited the axe, the President and the First Lady celebrated the première of “Melania,” a documentary that Amazon had licensed for forty million dollars and was reported to be spending another thirty-five million to promote. The deal was inked after Bezos had dinner with the Trumps shortly before the Inauguration."
@briankrebs if DAVOS occurred in a restaurant in NYC it would be considered racketeering
-
Bezos is wealthy enough to run the Washington Post as a freebie, if he wanted to do so.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/02/jeff-bezos-destroy-washington-post
Why won't he just donate it as a nonprofit like The Guardian?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/12/27/best-of-politico-magazine-2025-00704341
Still wondering how his greed, hubris, and Kompromat fed into this decision.
https://www.theverge.com/amazon/667916/jeff-bezos-amazon-saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggihttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51210743
https://www.wired.com/story/bezos-phone-hack-mbs-saudi-arabia/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/29/apple-iphone-bezos-hack/
Multi-billionares like Jeff "Bozo" must hide facts and truth to cover their crimes and corruption.
Buy up the media one way to do so......
-
Multi-billionares like Jeff "Bozo" must hide facts and truth to cover their crimes and corruption.
Buy up the media one way to do so......
Billionaires are laying the groundwork for another global recession & world war.
American billionaires cannot self-regulate. The USA chooses to leave the rich untaxed & unregulated. That wealth is used to torpedo democracy everywhere.
They caused the 1929 crash & tariffs prolonged a global recession, in the deluded belief that misery makes despotism feasible.
Billionaires like Henry Ford funded Hitler’s rise & a newspaper axis helped ramp up bigotry.
1/
-
Billionaires are laying the groundwork for another global recession & world war.
American billionaires cannot self-regulate. The USA chooses to leave the rich untaxed & unregulated. That wealth is used to torpedo democracy everywhere.
They caused the 1929 crash & tariffs prolonged a global recession, in the deluded belief that misery makes despotism feasible.
Billionaires like Henry Ford funded Hitler’s rise & a newspaper axis helped ramp up bigotry.
1/
Agree we are all facing a grim political/economic scenario with reckless,bigoted billionaires in charge.....not predetermined outcome...... yet.
-
Good coverage from The New Yorker
"The announcement was left to the executive editor, Matt Murray, and human-relations chief Wayne Connell; the newspaper’s publisher, Will Lewis, was nowhere to be seen as the grim news was unveiled. In what Murray termed a “broad strategic reset,” the Post’s storied sports department was shuttered “in its current form”; several reporters will now cover sports as a “cultural and societal phenomenon.” The metro staff, already cut to about forty staffers during the past five years, has been shrunk to about twelve; the foreign desks will be reduced to approximately twelve locations from more than twenty; Peter Finn, the international editor, told me that he asked to be laid off. The books section and the flagship podcast, “Post Reports,” will end. Shortly after the meeting, staffers received individualized e-mails letting them know whether they would stay or go. Murray said the retrenched Post would “concentrate on areas that demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and impact,” focusing on areas such as politics and national security. This strategy, a kind of Politico-lite, would be more convincing if so many of the most talented players were not already gone."
@briankrebs everything billionaires touch dies.
-
Billionaires are laying the groundwork for another global recession & world war.
American billionaires cannot self-regulate. The USA chooses to leave the rich untaxed & unregulated. That wealth is used to torpedo democracy everywhere.
They caused the 1929 crash & tariffs prolonged a global recession, in the deluded belief that misery makes despotism feasible.
Billionaires like Henry Ford funded Hitler’s rise & a newspaper axis helped ramp up bigotry.
1/
2/
Today's version of these idiots think climate change is "no big deal".
They deluded themselves that owning a billionaire bunker in Miami means they & their wealth will survive a nuclear war.
They cannot conceive that their conduct leads to their extinction along with the 1 billion famine deaths they're funding into existence plus 1.2 billion climate refugees.
-
2/
Today's version of these idiots think climate change is "no big deal".
They deluded themselves that owning a billionaire bunker in Miami means they & their wealth will survive a nuclear war.
They cannot conceive that their conduct leads to their extinction along with the 1 billion famine deaths they're funding into existence plus 1.2 billion climate refugees.
@Npars01 That "wealth" won't be worth much upon leaving the bunker if the world crumbles enough to necessitate going into it in the first place.
-
The NYT says WaPo is laying off about 30 percent of all employees, including more than 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/business/media/washington-post-layoffs.html
As billionaire Bezos owned WaPo banner proclaimed.. democracy dies in darkness.. kinda like promises made promises kept, eh? -
This makes me sad (been there). From Joe Menn at WaPo: "Most of the Washington Post’s tech reporters were laid off today, including me. I have loved my time at the paper, which is where I wanted to work from age 15. I take some consolation in not being among the survivors who will have to work harder with less for fewer readers. On to better things."
@briankrebs Sorry, man.
-
@briankrebs Seriously, I don't understand why the ex-pats don't form an enity called "realWashingtonPost".
I would pay.
I'm already paying some of them.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-killing-of-the-post@jab01701mid @briankrebs The problem is how to get a million subscribers paying $5/mo or $100k paying $50 and all of them at once. Running real news organization costs a magnitude or two more than posting ai generated lies. Real news, heck even real fact-checked OP-ed needs a hella lot of backstage help, including being RL where history happens.
-
@gme @briankrebs With thunderous applause.
-
Good coverage from The New Yorker
"The announcement was left to the executive editor, Matt Murray, and human-relations chief Wayne Connell; the newspaper’s publisher, Will Lewis, was nowhere to be seen as the grim news was unveiled. In what Murray termed a “broad strategic reset,” the Post’s storied sports department was shuttered “in its current form”; several reporters will now cover sports as a “cultural and societal phenomenon.” The metro staff, already cut to about forty staffers during the past five years, has been shrunk to about twelve; the foreign desks will be reduced to approximately twelve locations from more than twenty; Peter Finn, the international editor, told me that he asked to be laid off. The books section and the flagship podcast, “Post Reports,” will end. Shortly after the meeting, staffers received individualized e-mails letting them know whether they would stay or go. Murray said the retrenched Post would “concentrate on areas that demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and impact,” focusing on areas such as politics and national security. This strategy, a kind of Politico-lite, would be more convincing if so many of the most talented players were not already gone."
@briankrebs The metro section is important local news.
-
Oof. Like an ad for an airline right next to a story about a plane crash. From The New Yorker article:
"It did not help the staff’s morale that Lewis and his team were hobnobbing in Davos, or that Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez, were in Paris for Haute Couture Week. More troubling were reminders that Bezos, who once emblazoned “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on the paper’s masthead, appears to be pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the Trump Administration."
"As the staff awaited the axe, the President and the First Lady celebrated the première of “Melania,” a documentary that Amazon had licensed for forty million dollars and was reported to be spending another thirty-five million to promote. The deal was inked after Bezos had dinner with the Trumps shortly before the Inauguration."
@briankrebs "appears to be pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the Trump Administration" is the understatement of the year.
-
@briankrebs
Jeff Bezos = Lex Luthor, minus the charm.@freediverx
Lex is a fantasy invention and the usual representations or coming out of the dream factory, so of course the actors come with charm.Now the real world psychopath super villains from billionaire row don't have that Hollywood charm boost.
@briankrebs -
@briankrebs The metro section is important local news.
@avirr @briankrebs The metro section was the difference between WaPo and NYT. The Post was the local newspaper and the only reason it had national politics was because that was the the biggest company in town.
They broke Watergate by going to court to see who got arrested. Actual reporting.
-
Oof. Like an ad for an airline right next to a story about a plane crash. From The New Yorker article:
"It did not help the staff’s morale that Lewis and his team were hobnobbing in Davos, or that Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez, were in Paris for Haute Couture Week. More troubling were reminders that Bezos, who once emblazoned “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on the paper’s masthead, appears to be pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the Trump Administration."
"As the staff awaited the axe, the President and the First Lady celebrated the première of “Melania,” a documentary that Amazon had licensed for forty million dollars and was reported to be spending another thirty-five million to promote. The deal was inked after Bezos had dinner with the Trumps shortly before the Inauguration."
@briankrebs
Is Amazon planning layoffs? How many employees are expected to be affected in the US and worldwide? -
undefined oblomov@sociale.network shared this topic on